


dès vu

by loupettes



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:14:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27354052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loupettes/pseuds/loupettes
Summary: He was so in love with her. In this silence, in the chasm of the universe, it was palpable.She fiddled with the hem of her pyjama shorts before she found the courage to continue. “I don’t know. I just, I see the way you try - howhardyou try to abide by the laws of time set by your own people, and you always try to, even when you don’t want to. Even when it’s so impossibly unfair.”Ten x Rose. Angst, little fluff.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Comments: 9
Kudos: 56





	dès vu

**Author's Note:**

> Dialogue prompt: "I'm here and I'm staying"

“I’m proud of you,” she whispered.

He opened his eyes from his peaceful drowse to see her watching him, propped up against the opposite TARDIS door as they sat, legs crossed and intertwined, hovering above the Crab Nebula. It was deafeningly quiet; the reduced echo preserved only by the TARDIS' capacity to keep them from going mad from the silence of the universe enhancing her voice, deepening her confession; he was certain he would not have heard them if they had been anywhere else other than the vacuum of space.

“What?” He blinked. “What for?”

She chuckled gently and shrugged. “I don’t know. For being you.”

“I can assure you it took little to no effort on my part.”

Her smile widened and he admired her. Any smile of Rose Tyler’s was a smile worth cataloguing, but this was one of his favourites. Timid, loving, genuine and sincere, looking down as she savoured the sentiment. He sometimes wondered whether anybody else saw that smile; he liked to hope that a smile so pure was one that she only gifted him, but he knew that Rose was someone who welcomed love and joy so openly that it was, in fact, just _her_ smile.

He was so in love with her. In this silence, in the chasm of the universe, it was palpable.

She fiddled with the hem of her pyjama shorts before she found the courage to continue. “I don’t know. I just, I see the way you try - how _hard_ you try to abide by the laws of time set by your own people, and you _always_ try to, even when you don’t want to. Even when it’s so impossibly unfair.”

He considered her words and the way she spoke them, her face as she looked at him so tenderly. She so often rendered him awestruck that he thought he'd be used to it by now. “Rose, I…”

“- I know. It’s silly,” she dismissed, but remained determined to get it out, whatever it was she was trying to say. She wouldn’t look at him, but he knew Rose well enough by now to know that it was because she was trying to stay focused on her words because they _meant_ something to her. “But I think about you, about how you do all of this alone. And I think about how there isn’t anyone in your life who sees what you do _every single day_ and tells you they’re _proud_ of you.” She did look at him then, resolved to show him how much she meant the words she spoke. “But it's more than that, isn’t it? Because it’s not just the things you do every day, it’s the things you _don’t_ do too. You’re the last one - you don’t have to follow those laws. You could set them yourself, follow your own rules. But you don’t. You’re still fighting, every day, to stay true to them. And that must be… so hard. So, I am. Proud of you, that is.”

He had no idea what made him so still; the fact that she’d broken a silence of 21 minutes in such a way that made him wonder how she came to this thought; the way she struggled through her words like they were too big for her; or indeed the meaning of her words. She was looking back at him, though, with a sincerity and admiration of which he felt undeserving. His gaze dropped and his head turned to look out at the nebula. He knew he was perceiving it differently to her; as much as she marvelled at it and had been transfixed on its enchantment, the colours were brighter to him, more vibrantly tonal than to the human eye.

“That’s all you, you know? That compassion, that forgiveness, that understanding of right and wrong. All of the good you see in me all came from _you_.”

She nudged his thigh with her foot. “You’re terrible at taking a compliment.”

He pinched her toes in response. “Apparently, so are you.”

They chuckled softly, shaking their heads at one another affectionately. She shifted, peering over the threshold of the box cautiously as she did. 

“You wouldn’t get very far.” He nodded to the edge of the TARDIS. “She’s got us safely tucked in, you’d float around a bit, but I promise I’d grab onto you if you did start flying off towards that sun debris.”

“Yeah, been a bit too close to black holes recently so excuse the nerves.”

They continued to watch each other with smiles, until hers began to slowly fade; he could tell there was something she wanted to say. He was her best friend, she spoke to him about everything any 20-year-old woman from early 21st century London might otherwise find awkward to chat about with a man - well, a _human_ man at least. Periods, the stray soft hairs on her big toe, even told him the other day about a dreadful night with a rebound following Jimmy, which, to be fair, did sound _dreadful_. But when it came to certain topics, she became nervous. He never really understood why she would find it difficult to talk to him about them, but he noticed they were often about him. Personal questions, that sort of stuff. Then there was the obvious one, of course, the one neither of them dared to speak about but both knew it was there, but she was too assured even now for him to consider she might be about to tell him something he wasn't quite ready to confront. So, he waited. There would have been a time when he’d have fled, but not now. Now he wanted to give her a part of him devoted to nobody else but her. 

“Would you ever go back? Change what happened and save them?”

He hesitated. She’d been curious at the start, when she first began travelling with him. He was the first alien she’d ever met, so naturally, she wanted to learn of his home. But he was much more reluctant to talk about it while the wounds were still fresh, and after a while, she stoped bringing it up; she became afraid she might hurt him some more. That was until recently, when they’d started sleeping together at night. He was often made to relive those times, albeit far less so when she slept besides him, and wake to his hearts thumping amongst the screams of the innocent lives lost. Rose was a heavy sleeper, sometimes he’d need to entice her with a cup of tea before he could rouse her, but somehow she could always sense his distress, especially in those times. She’d sleepily reach out to him and he’d feel her there, the warmth of her skin and the caress of her fingers, and if she was lucid enough, she’d ask if he wanted to talk about it. Sometimes - twice, in fact - he’d spoken about it. She'd listened and stroked his hair as he talked as much as he felt he was able to about it. He mostly shakes his head and tells her it's ok, to go back to sleep, and in those times she kisses his forehead and lets him heal in his own time. So when she asked him now, he knew she had reason to. 

“I can’t, it’s time locked.”

“Meaning, what, like it’s a fixed point in time?”

She looked nervous. It really was awful to think she was somehow afraid of asking him, in some respects therefore afraid of _him_. He softened his expression, and in turn, he saw her shoulders drop. “Means I can never travel back to it. It’s off-limits.”

Her eyes were filled with genuine sorrow. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. 

“Na, it's fine," he tried, perhaps being able to fool anyone other than her. He smiled at her, although sadly. "Would have been nice though, hmm?” 

“You wouldn’t anyway.”

His brow furrowed. “You sound sure?”

“I _am_ sure.”

When he didn't reply, only stared yet more curiously at her, she continued.

“For the same reason I know you’d never try and change whatever happens to me.”

He felt sick. Mentioning the time war was one thing, but to mention _this_ in the same conversation was far too heavy a burden. He kept his expression unmoving under her gaze, but his eyes flickered under the pressure. She was right, of course. He never would; he wasn't one to go against the rules of time for his own gain, not when he had no business taking yet more from the universe and _especially_ not now that she’d told him how proud of him she was. But sometimes he’d catch himself wondering if that were indeed true. It was easy to tell himself that; in theory he knew it would be hard, losing her and keeping it that way, but he could do it if he fought through it. But then he’d feel her fingers scratching his hair soothingly after those nightmares and it would hit him, the thought of her _dying._ The hole he knows it would burn in his chest already ached to the point of him clinging to her tighter. He couldn’t imagine how he would cope if she weren’t there to cling to, and that hole in his chest never to be relieved of its pain.

“Wouldn’t I?”

Her breath caught in her throat and he saw her falter. She’d been so sure up until now, and he could wage a bet that she’d been sure of his response before she'd heard it. So when he gave her a reply she wasn't expecting, one she may have been dreading, she fell. And he _saw_ it; that worry in her eyes.

 _Would you?_

He couldn’t be sure if she had actually spoken the words out loud. Sometimes he wondered if they genuinely did share some telepathic link, or if they knew each other so well by now that their facial expressions translated as clear in each other’s minds as their own voices did. 

“I honestly don’t know, Rose,” he said quietly.

He could only assume he was looking back at her in such despair that it was the reason she began to move. He saw her try to calculate the logistics, how to be as close to him as possible in such an awkward position, and he held his arm open for her to scramble into. Her haphazard movements were enough to break the tension and they both laughed as they tried to reposition themselves; him settling back more comfortably against the door of the TARDIS; her nestling into his chest, dropping her legs perpendicularly over his to dangle over the edge of the ship. Her arms were tightly wrapped around his waist and she kept wiggling, shifting to finally settle somewhere comfortable. He let her, all the while holding on to her until she finally stilled. 

"Comfy?"

"Not at all," she chuckled, the air growing tense once more as her laughter subsided. “ _Promise_ me you wouldn’t.”

“You’re really going in hard for my hearts tonight, aren’t you?”

She nodded into his chest. “I’ve got you cornered - either answer my questions or chuck yourself off the edge of this ship into that has-been supernova.”

“You know I’d be bringing you down with me so watch what you ask.”

She sighed sadly. “I just want to know that you wouldn’t change, s’all. That losing me isn’t going to send you straight back to broody sulky you.”

“Right, off we go - ” he began to move them as much as he dared, and she shrieked in fright. 

“NO! Stop stop _stop!”_ She giggled, gripping the door as if it might help. “I’ll stop! I promise!”

He chucked, settling back against the door comfortably. His hand traced the grooves of her spine and they lay for a few minutes in their silence.

“I’ve never told you this, but I’ve been here many times before.”

“Well, I mean, that's understandable. You’ve been around for a good few years now so I can imagine you happen upon the same place more than once.”

He poked her ribs. “Oi! Enough about my age now.” He looked back out at the nebular below them, admiring it just as he had many times before now, except this time it brought a new sense of relief. “Its central star is actually quite young, but the remnants of its collapse are still magnificent. Shortly after the war, I'd come here and just look at it. I always saw something different in it, every time that made me keep moving forward. Because those days were hard, Rose. The ones following the war. It felt like there was nothing good left. But coming here gave me hope that there might be something to come of all that pain and destruction yet.”

She was quiet for a moment, listening to him tell her something only she alone had heard. Although he said the words fluently, she knew it was hard for him to be so open. His hearts beat steadily under her ear, and so she caught him from his fall. “This is the part where you tell me you couldn’t possibly need to anymore, now you have me?” 

“Yes.”

She stilled. It took her a few seconds before she could respond. “Doctor, you _just_ said you couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t mess around with time to bring me back, I can’t hear you say stuff like that to me.” Her voice caught in her throat and she clung to him tighter, sighing deeply in an attempt to keep herself composed. “It _hurts_.”

“No, I know. Believe me, I know,” he hesitated. He’d wanted to continue and assure her he'd be alright, but he couldn't ever control the ache in his chest that would prevent him from faltering at the thought of losing her. “And I can’t promise you that I myself won’t go mad with it. But I’m not just “ _keeping it together_ ” with you, I’m not _quite_ that volatile- ” he tapped her head playfully and was relieved to her scoff.

“Didn't you _just_ the other week challenge the devil to eternal damnation after you thought you'd lost me for good?”

“That I did. Alright, so perhaps I am a _little bit_ keeping it together because of you.” His tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear as he tried not to consider just how much _a little bit_ truly was. “But, amongst the many things having you around's made me realise is that I could probably figure it out by myself when I'll need to." 

“Teach a man to fish and all that?”

“Exactly,” he laughed. “Practise makes perfect.”

“Ah, so what you’re saying is all those time we keep gettin’ split up is actually just your homework?”

“Only time will tell.”

They had a marvellous talent for joking about anything and everything; it wasn’t so much that it was their coping mechanism for the terrors they sometimes faced, but it was more they needed each other’s laughter to breathe. Which made conversations such as these ones that much harder to joke about. She shuddered and he only held on to her tighter; she knew he was lying through his teeth, and so did he. But, in the end, they were near-invincible when they held onto each other as they did now.

“Well, then I guess I’m here, and I’m staying, because I don’t like the sound of you going up in a fight against time.”

It didn't matter how many times he heard her promise him forever; the words always somehow found their way into the oxygen that kept his hearts beating. “I think that’s probably for the best."


End file.
